


Bad Ideas

by kinosternon



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (temporary and otherwise), Angst, Canon-compliant character deaths, F/M, POV Third Person Omniscient, Point-of-departure AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-13 20:59:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9141961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinosternon/pseuds/kinosternon
Summary: AU in which Percy is possessed by Orthax, and Vex makes a deal with Saundor. An exploration of ways things might have been different.Winter's Crest exchange gift for Kat_the_minion.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kat_the_minion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat_the_minion/gifts).



> Original prompt: “Percy/Vex: Basically, a Orthax-possessed!Percy and a Saundor-charmed!Vex carving out a place for each other in the midst of the chaos. (gen is fine, but pairing is preferred)”
> 
> My brain went in a lot of different directions with this. The fic I envisioned at first was going to end up longer than I could actually manage by any sort of deadline. I may keep working on the longer version of this fic, mostly because I’m curious to see if I can actually finish it. In the meantime, though, I hope this is an acceptable substitute. 
> 
> (I also hope the timeline still makes sense with my adjustments. I did my best, though a lot of things get kinda glossed over.)

It starts with a failure. Where success could hardly have been expected, it’s an easy one to overlook, but it’s a failure all the same.

Scanlan stands next to Percy, still looking at the spot where the dissolving remains of Delilah Briarwood have vanished under the surface, and asks Percy to hand him his gun.

He uses every bit of persuasion at his disposal, but in that moment, it isn’t enough. Percy’s still wreathed faintly in smoke, casting dark glances every now and then at his sister, who’s leaning against the back wall and staring after Delilah’s sinking corpse with a grim, exhausted satisfaction. He barely hears Scanlan the first time, and when he understands what he’s asking for, he just scoffs.

He shoves the gun further into its holster at his side and does his best, now that the fighting’s over, to forget about it for a little while.

* * *

Their time in Whitestone is oddly quiet after that. The team, unused to the luxury of time, much less the ability to be alone for some or all of it, go their separate ways—some intentionally avoiding each other, others simply enjoying the opportunity to spend some quality time in solitude.

Pike hasn’t reappeared. It’s a shame; Percy thinks that there are things he might like to ask her.

Talks with the council he’s trying to build in Whitestone stall when Archibald learns of Cassandra’s betrayal. Percy goes out to find her one morning, in the free time they have, but can find no sign, so he enlists Vex to help him. There’s something dark in her, still, between an apprehension of the days to come and the faint shadow of Lady Briarwood’s last curse, but as she strokes Trinket in the light of the courtyard he thinks that everything might just be okay. She’s led him out of the darkness once before; he’s never going to forget that. Privately, he thinks that she probably saved him. His new family all helped to save him, in fact, but he finds he's glad for Vex in particular.

She helps him find Cassandra, who’d taken advantage of her newfound liberty perhaps unwisely; they find her pressed against a tree, wheezing, old ghosts clouding her eyes. Trinket carries her back to the castle. She’s half-delirious with injured lungs, and part of Percy is afraid of the helplessness he sees in her as she clings to his hand.

She’s been hurt, and deeply. He’s only beginning to learn the depths of his own wounds, after years of denying them. There’s so much out there in the world that he hadn’t realized he’d been ignoring, and it’s frankly overwhelming. He has friends to take him away from the chaotic obligations of Whitestone, but his sister has only the memory of the people who brainwashed her, and those who remained loyal are the very ones for whom her betrayal cut the deepest.

Archibald comes to visit as soon as he hears of her injury. As they converse, quiet and terribly careful with one another, Percy thinks that Archie probably needed to see this. Cassandra had made the wrong choice, but she is young and lost and horribly wounded; Archibald seems to have finally come to terms with that, and over time, he will come to heal. At this point, the objects of Cassandra’s temptation have been removed, and all that remains is to bring her back into the fold.

Outside his sister's chambers, Percy tells Vex this, slow and quiet, as together they brush Trinket in thanks for helping them. She listens thoughtfully, and tells him that he cares for Cassandra a great deal.

A part of him is still wondering if he could kill Cass and make it look like an accident. He smiles thinly, thanks her for the sentiment, and changes the subject.

* * *

The world falls apart shortly after Winter’s Crest, and Percy’s bleak thought is that he probably shouldn’t be surprised. His second, perhaps worse, thought is that it’s almost a relief to have something substantial to worry about that, for once, is not the slightest bit his fault. (He doesn’t kid himself that it will last.)

Whitestone, once a creeping shadow of his own doubts and terrifying responsibilities, becomes a tool he can wield against a threat cresting over the continent. He likes it better this way—likes the thought of refugees seeing this place as a place of safety rather than a haven for demons, with no memories of betrayal to darken the eaves of the forest all around.

He will make a home here for everyone he can, even if it cannot be the home they are wishing and grieving for—even if it can’t be the keep, the home that meant so much to the rest of his companions, and indeed to himself. He had promised Vex they would return, but in the meantime, he will take his birthright and he will carve out a place for them, temporary and ill-suited though it may be.

He’s concerned about the responsibilities he’s making his sister shoulder, but with every life he places in her hands he finds it a little easier to trust her. He is quite proud of her, though he doesn’t know how to say it in a way that won’t sound condescending. He tries not to be alone with her too often, and he shakes himself awake easier than he once did from dreams in which he finds her in her sleep and does her in.

* * *

Percy’s vacation from guilt is crushingly short-lived—it dies right along with Vex, and unlike Vex it seems to be over for good. She’s back, of course, and that’s the important thing; but leaving aside how close a thing her resurrection was, and what might have been lost in the trade, he wishes he could have spared her this. He wishes he could have spared everyone this. He thinks, privately, that in some ways this was a bigger shock than the Conclave.

It’s one thing to see himself as a failure and a writhing, shrieking mass of bad ideas. That’s an accurate assessment, as far as he can tell from the inside. But it’s been a while since he did something this horrible by sheer, innocent _accident_.

He tries to explain this to Vax, when Vax confronts him, before Vax strikes him. It occurs to him, then, that he’s forgotten how little his intentions matter. He almost thanks Vax for the lesson, but instead keeps his mouth safely shut. So as to do the least damage, he simply nods to him and leaves.

It’s only later, as the raw edges of anger and pain continue to cut into him after the fact, that he remembers for whose sake the curse was laid, and who has demanded of them an unknown price. It occurs to Percy that he has as little reason to trust gods as he does demons, and that Vax is as dear to Vex as the other way around.

He doesn’t know what it will be worth—if it’s any more than a waste of hubristic resolve—but he decides to keep an eye on Vax, just in case. He knows more than he once did about mysterious creatures trying to stretch an offer. He doesn’t want it to see it happen again.

* * *

Of course, it does happen again—in this case, technically premeditated by Percy himself—and Percy regrets on the snowy mountainside outside the androsphinx’s cave that he does not have the laboratory immediately at hand to start setting a certain possessed sword on _fire_.

There’s no acid or anything else interesting available, either, so he snatches the blade away while the others are distracted and sets it down out of sight and he uses words. As the others desperately begin the ritual to bring Grog back, he stares the sword down and airs every threat that comes to mind. He keeps going as their voices behind him fade into meaningless noise, as the light outside seems to dim at the edges of his vision, until he can no longer understand the words coming out of his mouth. He feels as if he is burning, and then, suddenly, something shoots over his head and two shadowy masses, one of them the sword itself, are snapping and clawing at each other. He feels the blows himself, though they do not touch him, and they’re enough to set him reeling before the sword finally clatters to the ground, beginning to shrink back to its normal size.

He sits back gasps, snow melting into his trousers and coat, as the last traces of smoke fade from around him. The fire that lit up his chest returns to its usual, sullen ember. He’s not sure, suddenly, how much of that conflict actually happened, and how much he imagined. He can hear sounds of a reasonably lively commotion coming from behind him, and assumes that the ritual has gone as well as could be hoped for. He brushes himself off, stands, and goes to rejoin the others.

He warns them off of trying to purge the blade of the spirit possessing it, operating on an instinct he doesn’t fully understand. Even after they’ve stashed it more or less safely in a pocket dimension, he sees Vex’s eye on him. They all toss glances his way the next few hours, probably remembering that he was the one to give Craven Edge to Grog in the first place, but Vex’s glances linger, and hers are the ones he notices.

He does his best to look reassuring in return, but he can feel the shadow dogging his footsteps. He considers asking Pike to try casting a restoration spell on him. He refrains.

* * *

Over the next few days, Vox Machina (temporarily) commandeers a tribe of goliath barbarians; frees Westruun; slay a dragon after two epic battles, the second culminating in its lair; and sets the city on the path to rebuilding, before taking a short trip for Vax to come more fully into his own as the Raven Queen’s champion.

(Percy has his own leads to follow up on, and then a prosthetic to throw together, but still he regrets that he was not able to keep a closer eye on Vax throughout. Still, when he returns, caked in blood and riding Trinket, he still seems fully himself, though evidently spooked and oddly peaceful by turns. Percy decides that it’s something he can let sit for the time being.)

Then, when they return to their home base, they are all of them almost murdered in their very beds.

Percy almost forgets, in the maelstrom of the horrible things that had almost happened—and still could, in Vax’s case. In the rush of trying to get him out of the robe, and the odd added puzzle of the curse that was laid on him, it’s easy to forget for a moment or two, but in the end it’s impossible to forget that he’s… _very_ unhappy with the way things turned out.

Cassandra, apparently thinking along the same lines as he, seeks him out the following afternoon, to apologize. He rather wishes she hadn’t, even though it’s the proper thing to do in this sort of situation.

“I put you all in danger, and I apologize,” Cassandra says, finishing off what had been a truly handsome speech. She’s shaping up very well for office; if she’s still struggling, she holds up under it quite well.

Since that time in the woods with Grog, the darkness in him has only grown stronger. As he listens to her speak, and thinks of the last time she betrayed him, he feels waves of heat wash over him, smoke and shadow rising from his feet, his cuffs. As she finishes his apology, his fingers actually twitch towards his gun. He wraps one hand around the other and takes care not to look Cassandra in the face, for fear of what she might find there.

"I want to forgive you," he told her, voice quiet and gentle and horribly, horribly bleak. "But I don't know if I _can_."

He’s aware of the terrible hypocrisy of the words even as he says them, and Cassandra looks about the way he imagines she would if he’d slapped her. She manages the briefest possible farewell before taking her leave, Percy’s door slamming behind her.

After she leaves, Percy stands in the center of his room, fists clenched, and has a conversation with a problem that evidently has not seen fit to go away. After that, he goes out and begins to ask around. Whitestone is still short on just about every resource, but between the refugees and others whose lives were upended by the occupation, he is able to gather a handful of erstwhile investigators. He swears them to secrecy and tells them only what they need to know. He warns them in the strongest possible terms against any foolishness, and then he sends them out, tracking a quarry that he’s allowed free rein for far too long already.

Now that he’s working concretely towards filling the contract he’s apparently made, some of the burning inside him lessens. Orthax, it would seem, is capable of a certain amount of patience. It’s nice to be of a mind with his demons again. It’s been too long.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Along with normal spoilers for the series, this chapter draws somewhat from the reveal of Matt's notes in an early DM Tips episode, where we get to see a little bit of what would have happened with Wodena's hut, and what would have happened if Vex had accepted down Saundor's offer. So if meta kind-of-spoilers bother you...well, this chapter has those.

Vex has not been looking forward to visiting the Feywilde, and so far it’s done very little to improve her opinion of it.

It’s beautiful, sure. But aside from her and her brother, Vox Machina doesn’t know the first thing about surviving here. Even she and Vax only barely know the first thing, and the place has it out for them from basically the first moment. She appreciates Pike’s presence while it lasts, and it’s nice to be somewhere that isn’t under the direct threat of dragons; but there’s still much to be afraid of here, especially for her personally.

Percy’s offer of a title—well, retroactive offer, really—does a great deal to improve her mood, but Garmelie sets her teeth on edge, and as night continues to fall over the landscape, she grows more and more uneasy. The forest at dusk is a dangerous place; with all the time she’s spent there, she knows that more than most. Worse, once they reach the bog, the smell of it hangs over everything, spreading even to the mansion from the way it's sunk into their clothes. With it comes an increasing sense of danger building at the back of her neck—the feeling of something watching. Perhaps it’s the forest; perhaps it’s Saundor himself. The trees move here, and she trusts nothing.

The night before they go to Saundor, she paces restlessly in the mansion. She’s not Vax, but she’s still quiet, and so Percy misses her when he makes his quiet way outside, pair of makeshift sludge-shoes in hand. He walks out alone into the eternal dusk. Vex waits half a minute, and then follows, silently flitting from tree to tree astride her broom.

Vex keeps out of sight as she tracks Percy across the bog and back to the hut they’d skirted around earlier. She’s more than a little frustrated that he's gone off on his own, but the earrings are likely out of range at this point, and she doesn’t want to leave Percy without backup. If worse comes to worst, she can simply grab him and fly away, but she doesn’t think he would come here to get into a fight by himself. He can be an foolish about the oddest things, but she’s fairly sure this isn’t one of those times.

Percy knocks on the door to the hut and waits. His expression is calm and unperturbed, from what she can make out in the dimness. She hears no response, but it seems Percy has received some sort of sign, because he opens the door.

The door to the hut is far too small for her to make it in on broomback even if she weren't sneaking, and Percy shuts it immediately and quietly behind him.

Luckily, the door is unlocked. She dismounts and pushes it open a crack, as soundlessly as she can. When she peeks in, neither person in the hut seems to have noticed. Instead, the creature inside—presumably Wodena, though she looks very little like other hags they’ve encountered, with her beautiful face and her withering extremities—is turning over what looks to be a dried fruit between her fingers. Vex can just make out Percy’s profile against the embers of the fire.

“If you seek answers,” she is telling him, “then I also have a question. Will you trade, bloody lord of shadow strengthening?”

She sees Percy wet his lips. “Yes,” he says.

She holds up the fruit in one long-fingered hand. “What now draws your hate more than anything?”

She only catches Percy’s mutter because of her familiarity with his voice. “…It couldn’t be an easy question, could it,” he says, and then takes a long, long moment to decide. “…Yes, when you get right down to it, it’s actually an easy enough answer. Anna Ripley.”

The hag doesn’t answer immediately, but as Vex watches, the fruit in her hand begins to expand into plumpness, the firelight catching on its now-smooth edge. The two of them watch, Vex still hidden, as Wodena eats. If the fruit had a pit, she shows no sign of spitting it out.

“I know little of the affairs of mortals, less still of humans,” she tells him. “But yes, even here, the hints of whispers have spread. There is one in your mortal realm who is toying with the threads of the future. Loose threads, discarded threads she is gathering, and preparing to cut countless others to weave her own tale. You have a heavy fate on your shoulders, little bleeding burning one.”

She seems amused by the prospect, rocking slightly in her chair as she licks the last of the fruit’s juice from her fingers.

Percy sighs, long and deep, as he thinks the answer over. “I suppose that’s all you can tell me,” he says. Again, it isn’t really a question. “Well, if nothing else, I thank you for the hint.”

“Yes. One question, one answer. That is the way of it. Unless…perhaps…” Wodena pauses, and her eyes suddenly cut across the room, glinting as her gaze lands squarely on Vex. Panicking, Vex spins away from the door, mounts her broom, and kicks off into the forest, speeding back the way she came. She makes it back to the mansion long before Percy can catch up with her, and makes sure she is in her room with the door locked.

She spends the rest of their resting time staring up at her ceiling, thoughts tripping over themselves in her mind.

* * *

She wasn’t sure what to expect from Saundor, but it wasn’t anything along these lines of a plea, or a deal. And yet she receives both, and from the beginning he has a terrifying ability to find every one of her weak points. 

His first offer infuriates her; his second makes her pause. His third and final offer is protection for those she holds dearest, and it’s enough to stop her short. She thinks of Percy’s face in the dim light of Wodena's hut, the way his eyes had filled with shadows, his expression drawn in hopelessness and terror. She thinks of Vax’s tear-stained face, of his retreating back in the moments after giving his life for hers. She takes a deep breath, and then another. She looks up at Saundor and sees a deal to be made, a burden that she alone can carry.

Vax has shouldered worse than this, she reasons, for the armor he wears. A Vestige would be worth it by itself, but the promise of a powerful being…

She thinks of the Rakshasa, and of creatures in the Abyss they have yet to fight. She thinks of dragons, and of Percy’s shadow…and she lets her arrow fall into the muck at her ankles, and holds out her hand.

She wants to believe in second chances. She wants to believe in love and trust as ways to fight back against the darkness. She can give her heart for that, she reasons. It isn’t what she’d dreamed for herself, in the brief moments she’d entertained far-flung hopes, but it really isn’t that far removed, either.

Saundor’s embrace, as his vines reach down and wrap around her, is cold and rough, but sure. She can hear the rapidly receding cries of her companions on the ground as she is lifted out of their sight and into the canopy, and then all she sees is green. She closes her eyes, in the endless moments that follow after, and she is changed.

It is cool here, and quiet save for the rustling of branches. She’s reminded in the trees in the forest outside Syngorn, and later outside human villages, when her brother was away thieving and she had only herself for company. Saundor whispers words to her and her alone, and she feels something cold and wooden begin to spread in her chest, and a sensation like cold water in her veins. Pain wracks her frame for a long moment, but it is a pain of change, of growing. For a moment, she’s terrified; but then the moment ends, and she still feels like herself, if injured and exhausted.

Before he carries her down to her companions, Saundor takes her up to the top of the canopy, and shows her the forest spread below. The trees are no longer stained with black, and from what she can see of the forest floor far below, even there the muck is receding. This place is still draped in endless dusk, but it is no longer drenched in shadow. Beside her, Saundor seems almost to shine.

She asks, uncertain and stammering, for the bow he carries, and he hands it to her without hesitation, as though even such a powerful item is no more than an afterthought. He kisses her once, on her forehead, his lips cool and rough and insistent, and covers her hands in his own, where they’re wrapped around the bow.

“Remember your promise, Vex’ahlia,” he whispers. “When you have exacted your revenge, come back to me. Return Fenthras, and we shall spend time together. I can be patient, but I have been alone here for so very long...do your great deeds, and then return to me.”

She promises—does not allow the words to stick in her throat—and the branches lower her down to the others.

They’ve shouted themselves hoarse. Vax is at her side before she alights, checking her over and then pulling her into his arms. She leans against him, hurt and drained, and is grateful when he stays silent. The others seem troubled, but they don’t push.

Garmelie reveals himself to be an Archfey, but Vex can’t really be moved to give a fuck at this point. Suddenly, instead of longing for sunlight, she’s aching for a dark, damp, safe place to sit and just _be_ for a little while. She’s not entirely sure she’s as human as she once was—or as elven, for that matter. She feels like something different from either.

Vax goes into change kicking and screaming, but sometimes Vex needs silence. She asks for it without words, and her friends, bless them, all listen. They join their hands and quietly return to the mortal realm.

* * *

As far as Percy is concerned, everything is going wrong at once. Vex’s deal with a mysterious and almost certainly evil benefactor is...disquieting, at the very least. Vorugal’s flyover is enough to nearly snap his already-frayed nerves. He can’t afford to break now, can’t afford to lose his home or his friends...but he also can’t afford to lose any chance he has of a lead that might let him undo even the slightest bit of the danger he, personally, has unleashed on the world.

For those things to happen, he must stay in one piece, and reasonably sane. His friends must stay alive, for his sake and also so they can continue to slay dragons. In addition to Whitestone's centuries of tradition and the massive failure its loss would comprise, he has great need of its resources in tracking Ripley down. He cannot afford to lose any of these things. 

There is nothing rational to these thoughts. He needs these things, even if he cannot expect the world to provide them. He would ask, but there is no one _to_ ask—he has no more faith in gods, and little left to offer any demons. So he holds on, white-knuckled, to what he can control—the last few scraps of his composure, the final dregs of his patience as the dragons swoop over once, and then again, and again…

For the moment, at least, is enough. There is time to breathe, and a choice that must be made. Of course, fools and mortals that they are, they decide it based on a coin toss.

It is luck, pure and simple, that takes them to Draconia. It’s Vex’s sheer ingenuity and engaging brilliance that keeps them from being enslaved by the Ravenites. And then…

It is sheer luck that it is Percy who spots it, when none of the others do. By sheer chance, a choice is left in his hands.

He weighs what has been lost against what he cannot lose, and makes his choice. He drives a hard bargain with the Ravenites, buying them as many days as he can get. He thinks that perhaps that they—that he, in particular—may well end up needing all of them.

* * *

Upon their return from Marquet, after a series of irritating distractions, they have managed to gain a reasonably long loan for Cabal’s Ruin. Percy finds, waiting for him in Whitestone, a long-delayed report from one of his informants.

As he reads, the last few dregs of his anger at Cassandra are soothed as his focus is redirected towards a much worthier target. He begins to lay in plans; he’ll be useless underwater, anyway, and he doesn’t feel that it’s wise to hold back anymore. There are some matters that ought not to be left to their own devices for too much longer, certain people living on stolen time. He’s waited long enough to solve this problem.

He doesn’t want to leave Vex, after everything that's happened. His gift to her had been calculated to offset the disregard of her father, if only for a little while; nothing he has to offer, so far as he knows, can possibly fix what’s fallen to her now. But, as he is learning, he can’t fix everything—indeed, even at his best, he can only reasonably hope to fix on thing at a time. This responsibility is to the world, not only to one person; it is one that he must take care of, if he possibly can. Hopefully the matter of Vex will be able to wait, at least for the time being. 

He explains to the others a little of what he intends, wishes them luck, and leaves. He leaves Cabal’s Ruin with Vax, in case it will come in useful. He doubts he’ll have much need of it where he’s going, anyway, and it makes him feel a little better about leaving them to their own devices.

They’re all of them adults, as he reminds himself. Surely he can go off on his own for a few days without courting total disaster. 


	3. Chapter 3

Vex comes back from Glintshore sick of the smell of the sea. They’ve found the dagger they went for, and though it took them almost a week to get it, they’re doing decently on time before their Draconian deadline. They’re discussing the possibility of going to the City of Brass next as they return to Whitestone, but they discover when they arrive that Percy has yet to return.

He left, Cassandra tells them, around the same time they did, but she has heard no word since then. He said that he was headed northwest, but since he was forced to travel in the normal way, she adds, it may not be strange that he’s still missing.

Vex disagrees. She thinks it is very strange, but it takes them another day and a half to track down Percy’s makeshift spy network (when did he make one of those? Why didn't he tell them about it?) and discover where he went. She also finds what appears to be a will, lying on a desk that has been cleared of all his other affairs. He calls it a “precaution,” but that is enough to push her over the edge. Privacy be damned, they need their gunman back, she argues—and Keyleth agrees, and makes an effort to scry him.

The scrying spell fails.

Vex, amid rising panic, thinks back to Percy’s words in the hut. Keyleth scries on Anna Ripley and finds a building that might, recently, have looked like new, oddly boxy and modern-looking in the middle of otherwise unoccupied woods alongside what appears to be a freshly dug mine. The building is burned to black and crumbling ash, right down to its hastily set foundations. There are children scattered around it, ragged and coal-smudged, looking lost and frightened.

Then the spell continues to a clearing not too far from the building. There, Ripley is sitting on the forest floor, slightly singed-looking notes all around her. She’s speaking sharply to half a dozen other figures, though Keyleth can make out none of their faces. There is still no sign of Percy anywhere, though it isn’t too hard to gather that he is what happened to the building—and worst of all, as Keyleth’s vision begins to fade, she catches an all-too-familiar glint of cylindrical metal at Ripley’s hip.

As she reports to the others, she can’t tell if it’s Percy’s List, or a duplicate that Ripley’s made herself. But, she adds worriedly, it looks a _lot_ like Percy’s List.

They question Percy’s network again, and hear rumors of a mysterious orphanage that has been taking children—including a few who had not been entirely abandoned. There are parents, here and there in the countryside, and some concerned adoptive guardians, who wish to know what has become of these children; even Cassandra, looking over official documents, finds a few petitions from villages to the north to have disappearances looked into. 

There is little else for them to do but to go to the place that Keyleth’s scrying revealed. She managed to spot a likely tree near the beginning of the spell, so they pile through, take a moment to get their bearings, and then head in.

The air in the burned-out shell of the orphanage-slash-factory is still. Most of the smoke has blown away by this point, but there’s enough of it trapped at the lower levels to set half of them coughing as they stumble through the twisted remains of once-intricate machinery. Vex has to keep blinking tears out of her eyes, and it makes it harder to see the few clues that remain in the wreck of the building.

Still, she finds the tracks, marred soon after their making by fire. She follows them out of the factory, until they intersect with an older, smaller set of tracks. She races ahead of the rest of them as they join with other, older tracks. Percy’s gait only speeds up, visualizing the bits and pieces of the track in her mind. She hears Vax's voice behind her, something about slowing down, but she’s gotten so wrapped up in the details she’s lost sight of what’s coming.

It’s better hidden than the first, and much smaller, but as she gets close the signs of a second fire, deep in a half-excavated quarry, are unmistakeable. Near its epicenter is a still figure in a charred coat, splayed where he’d fallen, long-dried blood splashed beneath him.

Vex barely hears her own scream.

* * *

Percy has been dead, by Vex’s best count, for three days.

She can count it down to almost the hour, because it’s just short enough that the changes still come quickly. She knows this from her tracking, but on animals usually, not on people. Never on a friend.

She doesn’t tell them that Percy likely fell at crack of dawn, after stumbling through the forest in the night and resting for a bare hour or two, only to see the sun come up on a campfire that had to have been laid as a trap for him to step in.

Out of numb habit, Vex keeps searching, and at the other end of the quarry, finds signs of the ones who laid the trap—cleverly hidden, but not clever enough. Not for her. 

Vex’s mind explodes into a fire of hate, and the hunt begins.

* * *

Vax remembers the first few moments after they learned the fate of their mother. He and Vex hardly ever talk about it, but he wonders what was going on in her head that day, as they ran this way and that, panicked, tracking down hints that were already years old, grieving lost time burying lost family.

They’ve always been close, closer than close, but that doesn’t change the fact that every now and then Vax looks at his sister and sees a stranger behind her eyes. There are some things about Vex that he can simply never understand, and her reaction to the loss of their mother was one of those things.

He felt rage at their mother’s fate, of course—wanted to make the world hurt as he was hurting, wanted her life and the cruelty of her death to be acknowledged by the uncaring universe—but that had been a tantrum, at its heart, and he’d gotten over it eventually, moment by slow and painstaking moment.

It had taken Vax a very long time to understand the role of vengeance, the idea of violence beyond a kill-or-be-killed scenario or sleight of hand or even convenience. Thievery taught him contempt in the face of those who would do him harm, to take every advantage, to never face an enemy head-on when you could evade. But it also taught him to roll in the face of life’s punches, to find the little inequalities you could turn to your advantage and use them to tip the scales.

Vex’s reaction had been…not that, and while vengeance came easier to him now than it once had, for Vex it's always seemed to come as natural as breathing.

For a while, it was just dragons. He could respect that—be awed by her bravery, in fact. Dragons tended to be the _worst_ , and she got along just fine with the few they’d met that weren’t, so he was fine with her dragon-killing abilities. It was part of what made his sister so badass.

He never thought her thirst for vengeance would go this far, but then, he doesn't think any of them had anticipated a fight like this one. Except perhaps Percy—the awful, irredeemably arrogant, supercilious, self-obsessed _bastard_. Vax is furious with him for this bullshit, and terrified of what his sister might become as a result.

So when the fight is over and Ripley finally falls, he uses the last few moments of his magic boots to get between his sister and Kynan, well aware that he is leaving himself open to attacks in more than one direction.

“Vex, no!”

He steps in front of her, his arms spread, cloak flapping once and then falling still at his sides in the sick, smoky air of their battlefield.

He’s been at the business end of his sister’s weapon before, but not this weapon, and never this close. Vex’s eyes are brilliant with hate, and Fenthras has wrapped its tendrils around her fingers and wrists. He thinks a few of them have grown into her skin.

He hates standing against her, but this is something she must not do, and he will do what it takes to stop it. He doesn’t know what’s gotten into her, what’s trying to take her over as the green in her eyes gets greener and the flame of kindness he’s used to seeing in her is buffeted by an unseen storm, but he’ll stand against it. He’ll do everything he can.

“I love you,” he says, because he wants her to know he doesn’t love her any _less_. “Don’t do this. Please.”

Vex, underneath the whatever-the-rest-of-it-is, looks furious and surprised and maybe a little hurt (certainly more than a little indignant). “You saw what he did to Keyleth!” 

“I did. He isn’t doing it right now. Vex, I think there’s more to this story. We know Ripley’s an evil bitch—we don’t know what she might have done to him.”

“Whatever it was, it was enough for him to stab me in the back,” Keyleth calls, sounding nearly as angry as Vex. Vax blinks; that, he hadn’t quite expected. “And that was after saying how much he liked us the last time he met us!”

“We’ll have time to deal with him later,” Vax insists. “I’m not saying we let him go. Right now, he’s our best chance of finding out what happened. He's worth more to us alive.”

“…You’re right,” Keyleth says. The tendrils of air whipping around her hair fade, and she seems to shrink in on herself. “We need to get back to Whitestone. We can’t afford to waste any more time.”

He hears her footsteps fading back into the trees, back to…back to where Percy is. (Not just his body _,_ he thinks.He's the champion of a goddess of death, but still he can’t think of him like that, not yet.) He keeps his gaze on Vex, waiting to see what she will decide.

She could easily try to shoot around him. If she does, he will do all he could to dodge _into_ the blow. One shot likely won’t kill Kynan, of course, regardless of how powerful Fenthras had become. But he’s hurt the boy enough already, apparently more than he’d previously begun to imagine. He doesn’t want to let him be harmed any further, not when there is nothing to be gained but the last few bitter dregs of revenge and perhaps a piece of his sister’s soul.

Slowly, by agonizing inches, the vines slow, wrapping themselves around the bow and returning to dead wood. Vex’s hands lower until she drops the bow to the ground. She follows it, falling to her knees, and keens like a wounded animal. Vax leaves Kynan behind, wrapping herself around his sister’s fallen form, feeling the tears come at last, for everything they’ve lost, for everything Vex is going through.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her, voice breaking. “I’m so sorry.” 

Eventually, she pulls herself together by sheer force of will. She’s trembling under his hands, but her when she raises her head, her expression is dull and determined. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s bring him to Pike. Let’s see if there’s anything left to do.”

* * *

No matter what she does, Pike can’t reach him. It takes an agonizingly long time for them to realize that Percy’s soul is trapped inside his own gun. The idea is too horrible to contemplate, but it comes to the point where there is no alternative. Keyleth, who’s been holding onto it, takes it out and runs her fingers along the empty barrels, horrified at the realization of what—of _whom_ —he’d been keeping at his side all this time.

She sees Cassandra’s name still written on the gun, and points it out to Vex, horrified. Then she turns to the others.

“What if we cast Greater Restoration on the gun?”

The others are dubious. Vex points out that Percy thought it was a bad idea the last time, and Vax rebuts that that may be a point in favor of trying it. They’d all assumed that Percy was more or less all right after the incident in the tunnel, he argues, but it seems likely at this point that they'd thought wrong.

Each of them finds a piece of evidence they’d neglected to tell the others: a hunch, a stray disturbing line, an expression or a twitch or fingering of his gun. It feels like a betrayal, but also like perhaps a truth has come to light. It feels like honesty, and progress, and under it all an enduring (perhaps slightly exasperated) love.

Even so, Vex isn’t sure Percy’s going to want to come back. If nothing else, he’s always been a bit on the petty side, especially in his bad moments. Worse, the only solid tie he has left in this world is a promise he doesn’t even want to fulfill to a creature that is already feasting on his soul. It’s going to be a bit of a hard sell.

Still, Vex is a haggler. She offers him what little she can—her heart, or whatever of it isn’t already on loan. She pushes it a bit further, desperate: she doesn’t want to give herself over to Saundor, or doesn’t want to have done so if it’s already happened; if she can, or could, she would give it to him. She doesn’t know if he can hear her, but she prays it’s enough.

There’s a long moment after the shaft of life that pierces Percy’s chest in which she’s sure it hasn’t been. She’s joined Vax where he kneels on the floor, wings spread on either side of Percy. His arm wrapped around her is painfully tight, like he’s afraid she’ll shake apart and slip away from him, but she just feels still and empty. Keyleth’s on his other side, and Vex feels her hand where it’s stretched around to the back of her head, fingertips buried in the hair at the base of her neck. Scanlan’s lips are pressed together so hard that they’ve gone white, and he’s joined hands with Pike, up where she’s kneeling at Percy’s side. Grog hovers behind her, silent, simply watching.

Then Percy gasps and begins breathing. He’s ragged and bruised and limp, a shell of his usual self. His eyes are haunted by a shadow he refuses to speak of. But when he tells them, this time, that a curse on him has been lifted, the words have a ring of truth they never held before. Vex finds herself weeping silently into Vax’s shoulder.

Something in her has shifted, like a bit of ice melting in her heart. She isn’t sure what it means, not yet, but there's something new in her. Perhaps its tied to her promise. She has, she reflects, a great deal of thinking to do.

* * *

That night, after an evening on the town that leaves Pike utterly trashed (and Scanlan at the beginning of a slightly less disastrous drug deal than the one nobody's supposed to know about), Zahra seeks Vex out. She’s heard concerning rumors about a deal Vex made for her new weapon. With all of Vox Machina's chaotic arrivals and departures, they’ve had no opportunity to catch up lately, Zahra murmurs, and she and Kash have been worried.

She takes Vex to her quarters, and has her leave Fenthras at the door before casting a careful magic circle around the living room. She makes tea for them both as she describes, in vague and general terms, her contract with the Great Old Ones and what it means. She continues into what she knows about the Archfey, the ins and outs of their customs and their contracts. She doesn’t know much about Saundor, she says, and asks Vex for every detail she can dredge up.

Vex, for her part, at first feels oddly cornered. But Zahra is quiet and attentive, asking questions that invite her to explain further without being intrusive. Vex finds herself saying aloud things he hadn’t even realized until they’d fallen out of her mouth, and feels more and more foolish about the call she made, more and more angry about what Saundor might have been attempting, what he may yet try to take from her. Even then, though, Zahra is supportive. After all, it is, as she points out, a seriously badass bow. Then there’s the abilities Vex is still trying to learn her way around, which are nothing to sneeze at in a fight. And having made nice to Saundor the first time, they know more about him than they would if they’d fought him immediately—and perhaps, if they’re very, very clever, they can get the jump on him in the future.

“That’s if you decide to break your pact,” she adds. “Which is entirely up to you, of course. But if you do, darling, your friends will be right behind you. Don’t be afraid to do whatever _you_ want.”

“You’re right,” Vex says, and sets her plate and saucer down to hug her tightly. “Thank you,” she says into Zahra’s ear. “I think I needed this talk.”

“You’re always welcome,” Zahra assures her, and they talk for a few hours more, about lighter things and heavier alike, and the dragons still looming in their future.

When Vex leaves, her heart feels lighter than it has since she traded it away. She’s done closing her eyes to this, she thinks. There are other priorities, and they come first, but Saundor is a problem she’s going to have to face sooner or later. It’s nice to know that no matter how things turn out, she won’t have to do it alone.

* * *

After all the bullshit they’ve been though lately, Vex thinks with no small amount of humor, summoning a demon to fuck up an ancient white dragon almost seems commonplace. Not that specific scenario, perhaps, but things have been all over the place, lately. This seems to fit.

She makes sure that Percy’s as well-hidden as she can make him, and her heart stops when Yenk, climbing the wall, stumbles right onto his vantage point. But despite that—and despite her brother jumping in like a dumbass, as usual, _and_ despite almost losing Pike and Vax at a stroke, _and_ despite Vorugal’s near-escape and the massive wild-card that is Raishan and/or Larkin—somehow or other, they muddle through.

When the fight’s over—Vax still supporting Pike with one arm as Keyleth uses the melting snow to slough the gore from her body and Vex admires the tree sprouting from Vorugal’s corpse—Percy goes silent, eyes darting between his companions, and, when they each have a moment free, he tells them there’s something they need to see.

“One last thing we need to take care of,” he says, and drags all of them away, back toward Vorugal’s lair.

Vex doesn’t understand why at first. The obvious conclusion is raiding Vorugal’s hoard, but that doesn’t seem particularly time-sensitive at the moment. But Percy is still and silent and their victory doesn’t sing in him, not at all; he’s walking like someone headed to another battle, someone about to lose a war. She follows behind him and feels the dread growing in her with every step.

When he shows them Tiberius, around the edges of the pit of grief opening up in her, she’s almost relieved it wasn’t something worse. Almost.

(There is a second, much smaller body wrapped around his neck: Lockheed, apparently loyal to his master to the last, or perhaps he simply had nowhere else to go. Vex’s practiced eye takes in the pronounced ribs, the thinner layer of frost, and judges that he died of malnutrition just as much as frostbite, and much more recently than his master. She doesn’t say a word about it to the others.)

Vax flies up, face set like flint, and breaks the ice to bring him down. Grog catches the body as it tumbles off the spike, holding him gently, carefully not looking him in the face. They stumble through an awkward conversation, trying to decide where to lay him to rest. Vorugal may be gone, but they can feel time passing them by even as they stand here; they may have just started a war they’re not ready to fight. And as much as Keyleth protests, they can’t lay Tiberius in Greyskull Keep when it’s still the lair of a dragon, and it wouldn’t be right to keep him in Whitestone when he’s never even been there.

Percy, voice dreadfully chilly and quiet, suggests the remnants of the library. Vex jumps in to agree, worried that the thoughtfulness of the suggestion will be drowned out by Percy’s awful tone. 

Even once their makeshift ceremony completed, Percy sits with the expression of someone who is trying to remember that he is not surprised. He’s the master of horrible thoughts; perhaps, Vex thinks, it is a point of pride that this not be enough to shake him. But it’s a sham, if that’s what he’s thinking.

Keyleth, quiet and tearful until now, has no more patience for his silence.

“You saw—you saw _him_ —last time? And you didn’t think maybe you should _tell_ us?” Keyleth’s voice is shaking with pain and anger. _Keyleth_ is shaking, full with both of those things, her grief a storm fierce enough to tear her down, and for a moment Vex is too frozen to do much more than watch it take her over.

“Keyleth…” she begins, but Keyleth dismisses her with a glance. It’s not that she’s distracted from her grief by this—it’s that she knows that Percy has done wrong, and that is another wound she’s carrying, and one that seems so much more treatable. Even in the midst of her grief, Vex has never seen Keyleth this angry at Percy before.

“You’re right,” Percy says quietly. “I’m sorry. I should have told you all so much sooner.”

The lack of a fight brings her down somewhat, but not much. “Yes,” she says, words a thready whisper, “you should have.” She marches off, back to the ragged hole she dug out of the ice, to where Vax is picking up books one by one with a sorrowful, contemplative look. Percy stays where he is, distant, watching. Vex wants to do something, but can’t think of what, so she pulls Trinket close and tugs absently at his fur.

“I promise to do better,” Percy mutters, but when she looks over he isn’t looking at her. He’s staring after Keyleth, and she thinks his words are more for himself than anyone else. One of his hands is in his inside coat pocket, fingering absently at something there. “I promise to do better.”

* * *

“Percy?”

They’ve retired to Scanlan’s mansion for the night, still in various states of grief and shock. Vex knocks on the door first, twice, but both times there is no answer. A few moments pass after she calls his name, and she’s about to give up when she heard his doorknob turn.

“Vex.” He smiles at her, faintly, but the expression is strained. “What can I do for you?”

“I…I wanted to talk to you about what happened,” she says. “And…well. I didn’t want to be alone.”

“I must admit, it seems like a little bit of an odd choice,” Percy mutters, but pulls the door open. “But if it’s what you want, then of course. Please come in.”

It’s a little, Vex reflects, like visiting the chamber of an icicle. Percy’s bed is slightly rumpled where he’s sat on it, and the large desk Scanlan provided is already half-covered with the chaos of half-legible notes and spare parts that seem to appear on any hard, horizontal surface within moments of Percy claiming it. Other than that, the room is untouched. Curtains cover rectangles on the walls that, if opened, reveal panels that add bright ambient light to the room if you tell them to; Percy has kept these covered, and the desk is the only brightly lit part of the room.

Percy, apparently at a bit of a loss, fidgets around a bit before perching on a corner of the bed, gesturing vaguely at the pair of armchairs near a dark, cold fireplace. “Sit wherever you like,” he says absently. His eyes still aren’t meeting hers.

Vex considers the chairs for a moment—considers the desk chair, which she could pull up right beside the bed and sit backwards in—and then decides to keep it simple, and settles on the bed next to Percy, shoulders turned toward him.

“Percy,” she says softly, coaxing him to look at her. When it didn’t work, she continues. “Percival Frederickstein von—“

“Please don’t,” he says, answering in kind. His mouth perks up in a humorless smile. “I already know I’m in trouble.”

“You are in trouble,” Vex says, “but not with me. Not yet, anyway. I…I just need to know why you didn’t tell us sooner. You must have seen him last time—why didn’t you tell the rest of us?”

Percy runs one hand through his hair, then rests his elbows on his knees, head hanging down. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I wish I knew. It’s likely that I’m simply a coward. I’d say I couldn’t do it, but that would be a lie—I’ve done much harder things before.” He shakes his head, bitter. “There wasn’t an opportune moment, but how could there have been? I suppose I was worried that it would affect our morale, or drive us all into an unwise revenge. That might’ve been the reason. There’s always a reason.” 

“Is there?”

“Yes! For every _stupid_ scheme I come up with, for every short-sighted deal, every lie, every act of cowardice, everything that makes me break _everything I touch_ ”—his hands clench into fists, shaking with the force of his anger, but his voice is terribly quiet—“for all of that, for all I should have learned by now, somehow I can _always_ come up with reasons.”

“Maybe that just means you’ve never stopped trying,” Vex tries.

“I think if I did stop sometimes, that things would be better.” Percy says. “I should have told you all, and I’m truly sorry. I’ll have to apologize to everyone, of course—Keyleth especially, if she’ll listen to me. Tiberius was always a great friend of hers.”

“You’re her best friend, too.” Vex lays a hand over his fist, squeezing gently. “I’ve heard her say it. She’ll listen.”

“I know.” Percy sighs, and looks up like he’s shifting a load on his shoulders. “How are you?”

“Me?” Vex’s voice breaks in surprise, the sudden clarity of his gaze catching her off-guard. “I’m…fine, I think. It’ll take a little while. He was one of us.”

“He was,” Percy agrees.

“And…and he _left_ ,” she continues. Her voice breaks, but she swallows and continues. “He left, and now he’s gone, and I don’t know how to feel about it. I wish I could know what he would have thought if he’d stayed with us. I wish he could have been with us.” Her hands had gathered into fists in her lap, she noticed dimly, and were shaking.

“I wish I’d known he was gone before we’d fought,” she continues, only realizing the truth of what she’s saying as she says it. “I wish I’d known exactly what Vorugal had done. I wish I could kill him again, so I could really _mean_  it…”

In that moment, Percy finds that he cares very little for vengeance, and he doesn't need a demon to sell him the will to get out of this.

He's too selfish to leave Vex to this. She and the others saved him from his demons, despite every effort of his to have it otherwise. He'll make sure they do the same for her.

They’re going to end Saundor, and save Vex from whatever the future holds—even if it's just herself. And maybe, if he’s very, very lucky, somewhere in there she might be willing to help him find a way to save himself from the person he’s become.

He’s still very, very lost in this darkness he’s built up for himself. It’s like the Feywilde, only he’s continued walking further and further into the night, so far that he isn’t sure whether it’s best to continue or to try to turn around. He doesn’t know if it’s the right thing, trying to help Vex, but at this point he’s past caring. He’s done worse things before for much pettier reasons, and it would seem his mind is made up.

Vex may have promised Saundor her heart, but he’s never going to stop helping her to keep it safe—not while his is still beating.

“I think…and trust me, I’m fully aware of the hypocrisy of saying this, Vex, but it could be important…” He clears his throat. “I think that we both may have attitudes on vengeance that have grown, perhaps, a bit unhealthy.”

She looks at him like he’s said something incredibly obvious, but then she smiles. It’s a little smile, but there’s something sparkling in it. “You’re right,” she says. “Maybe that’s something for us to work on.”

He smiles back. “Maybe it is.”

And then she surprises them both by reaching out for him, wrapping around him as gentle as spring grass, warm as summer, and kissing him. It takes him a moment, tense as always, to answer, but as he finally returns her embrace, he finds himself wishing he could never let go. 


End file.
